The Financial Times on Monday had two stories on inflation, one a lengthy story, the other a a comment, “The problem with inflation indices,” by Gideon Munchau, triggered by the fact that the Bank of England missed its inflation targets of 2% by over a percentage point (their Consumer Price Index increased at an annualized […]
Read more...By way of background, Greg Mankiw was Chairman of Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers, is the author of a very popular economics textbook, teaches at Harvard, and is a advisor to Mitt Romney. Not surprisingly, that makes him a card carrying member of the economics orthodoxy. So when some Harvard students went on a hunger […]
Read more...The debate among Serious Economists about the benefits of free trade continues, and Dani Rodrik continues to take a dispassionate look at the data and the models. This post, although a bit geeky, is intriguing because Rodrik dissects an analysis cited by Bernanke in a recent speech, which found that the benefits of free trade […]
Read more...Readers may have taken note about the robust debate among Serious Economists about free trade, provoked in large measure by Harvard economist Dani Rodrik holding some of his peers’ feet to the fire (note that Rodrik is not anti-free trade, but anti sloppy or dumbed down justifications). One continuing bone of contention between economists and […]
Read more...Kudos for an excellent post, “Inflation Targeting is Flawed,” by Michael Shedlock at Mish’s Global Economic Trend Analysis. Like many other observers, we’ve criticized the Fed’s failure to consider, or even acknowledge, asset price inflation in its monetary policy decisions. Instead, the Fed and other central bankers focus on traditional price inflation, and stick their […]
Read more...Dani Rodrik, if he thought it wasn’t beneath him, deserves an op-ed column at a well respected paper. He has managed to foment a good deal of lively debate among Serious Economists (the blogs involved include his, Brad DeLong’s, Mark Thoma’s, and Greg Mankiw’s) on the question of trade economics. For the most part, Dani […]
Read more...Yesterday, our post “Costly Trade with China,” cited a study by the same name by the Economic Policy Institute which estimated the jobs lost to trade with China between 1997 and 2006 at 2.1 million. I wondered whether anyone had done the calculus as to what the offsets to these job losses might be, and […]
Read more...Due to Paul Volcker’s having broken the back of inflation in the early 1980s, and Alan Greenspan performing what appears to be adequately on the substance of his job and masterfully at the showmanship, the Fed’s reputation is at an all time high. And that in and of itself is a danger sign. The Fed’s […]
Read more...The debate among some serious academics on the economic models, their merits, and what they say about who might win or lose from trade continued over the weekend. While informative, it was also oriented heavily towards theory. Dani Rodrik tries to sum up: Can we all agree on these? 1.Trade policy works through its effect […]
Read more...Yesterday, we featured a post from Dani Rodrik which observed that free trade doesn’t necessarily lower prices (it will lower prices of imports and increase prices of exports, so it depends on the mix of goods purchased). What is interesting about the debate that unfolded is that it tells us something not just about free […]
Read more...This is a nice post from Dani Rodrik. The short answer is it depends. Free trade increases the price of export goods and lowers the price of imports: [A]nyone who understands comparative advantage knows that free trade affects relative prices, not the price level (the latter being the province of macro and monetary factors). When […]
Read more...Australian economist John Quiggin posted a high level event chart of the how Seriously Bad scenarios might play themselves out (from a talk by sustainability expert Chris Moran) and what the policy response might be. It includes probability estimates from 80 students. However, as the chart shows, the rational calculus doesn’t bode well for forestalling […]
Read more...This post comes from a Frank de Libero, reader at Angry Bear. By way of background, not only are some of the main writers at Angry Bear pretty serious statisticians, but they attract them as readers, and Libero appears to be one. Libero does a quick and dirty analysis of employment versus various ways to […]
Read more...Alan Reynolds has become income inequality’s analogue to a global warming denier. Even after Fed chairman Ben Bernanke and President Bush have acknowledged that income disparity has increased, Reynolds is still fighting a rearguard action. He wrote a series of articles, starting with a Wall Street Journal comment last December, arguing against the widely-cited finding […]
Read more...As we’ve discussed, in the UK there is a move afoot to include the concept of wellbeing in public policy debates. The Brits have recognized that alienation and anomie are on the rise and are willing to discuss whether government can be part of the solution, or at least not part of the problem. While […]
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